FRIENDS OF AMBLER - AGM REPORT 1[st] April 2024- 31[st] March 2025
ABOUT US
Friends of Ambler (‘FoA’) is a registered charity which supports Ambler Primary School and Children's Centre by raising funds for facilities, equipment and activities, and running fun events for the children and their families. Everyone involved does so voluntarily - contributing their personal time and skills.
Events range in focus from fundraising, entertainment for the Ambler children as well as their parents and carers, and also providing opportunities for all to discover more about the school and our community.
STRUCTURE AND GOVERNANCE
Every parent and carer with a child attending Ambler Children’s Centre and Primary School is automatically a member of FoA. Everyone is welcome to join in as little or as much as they wish.
The main elected Committee members are required to be Trustees, registered with the Charities Commission, with associated legal responsibilities. We reelected the same committee at the start of the school academic year.
The elected committee members registered with the Charities Committee from October 2023 to April 2024 were Lucy Carraz (Chair), Tom Edwards (Treasurer), and Yvonne Halsey (Secretary). We will be voting in a new Chair and Secretary during the 2025 AGM. I would like to take this early opportunity to thank Yvonne for all she has done in her role this year and agreeing to stay on as a Trustee for the year ahead.
The 2024/2025 Committee included: Dom Bouloux, Jeni Burt, Amy Colori, Lucy Carraz, Louis Carraz, Sorrel Challands, Asier Domaica, Gale Foster, Catherine Kenyon, Siobhan McKenna, Illiana Ortega Alcazar, Lou Ramsden, Sayyeda Salam and Natalia Yanez-Stiel. Additional people joined the committee after the reporting period including Cylina Addai, Hannah Foggo, Thomas Karshan, Racky Langston, Amy Little, Fede Mocini, Tilly Rubens, Ellie Thompson and Eylem Yildrim. We have included in the report for completeness as they played critical roles in the success of the academic year. – Thank you!
The Committee liaises directly with the school to make decisions on the timetable of events and expenditure of profits. In addition to regular Committee meetings, we hold occasional ad hoc open meetings for any member to attend. These provide the opportunity to join in with event planning, make suggestions and volunteer to do many other valuable tasks.
FoA has a Charities Aid Foundation bank account and is a Charity registered with the Charities Commission and HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) to which it files the necessary documents required by law.
FoA follows the School and Governing Body’s lead for safeguarding, the type of events run (and their timing) and the priorities for expenditure of funds or funding applications.
In addition, FOA supports Amber Arts and Grow Ambler , which are sub-groups of FOA which focus on enhancing arts provision and improving the environment school-wide.
HIGHLIGHTS
The 2024/2025 school year was extremely busy and we achieved a lot! We held discos for all year groups. A special thank you to Jack Baker, Rosie Baker, Matthias Holgersson and Ju Decanine for the excellent tunes and the Kenyon family for providing the disco lighting. We also ran the Greetings Card Project which we do annually and our traditional Silent Auction which was even more popular than the previous year. This was, once again, a huge community effort with many people donating their time and skills.
We put on a Winter Afternoon of Fun for the kids, which they all enjoyed. The afternoon included face painting and biscuit decorating. Thank you to Jenny Oscroft for all the help with the biscuits! By doing it during the school day, it meant that every Ambler child got to be there. We also ran a Christmas Tree sale for the first time and paid for the children to attend a Christmas pantomime at the Hackney Empire!
We ran our traditional second-hand uniform give aways and a second hand Christmas jumper swap in order to create a culture of reuse at Ambler. We continue with the Ambler Community Fund, which is a separate fundraising campaign, where the money goes to support individual families in Ambler struggling with the costs of school trips and clubs.
A significant highlight has been the work of FoA’s Sorrell Challends to design the Ambler School attic space to help bring the curriculum to life at Ambler with a Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths space.
Team members continue to liaise with the school on initiatives to reduce our carbon footprint, and lobby the relevant authorities to introduce measures to improve air quality, reduce pollution and traffic and make Finsbury Park safer for our families. Amy Calori our FoA Sustainability Lead met with North London Waste Authority to look at what more we can do so expect more to come in 2025/26!
In February 2025, we put on four movie nights to cover all the year groups. The kids loved getting dressed in their PJs and watching movies whilst chomping on popcorn.
Whilst outside of the formal reporting period for the benefit of completeness of the academic year we note that in May 2024 we held an 90’s night for parents and carers to come and socialize and dance along to live music performed by our community’s resident DJs – James Chapman, Ju Decanine, Matthias Holfersson and Rosie Baker.
We held our Summer Fair on 21[st] June and had an amazing turnout. We continued with the International Food Stall which we expanded from last year to really reflect the great diversity of our school and community. We also arranged a Maypole dance to celebrate Midsummer and had the Deputy Mayor of Islington open the fair! Thank you to all the Summer Fair FoA team for all the prep and fantastic running of it on the day – what a huge success! And thank you to Andre Sallowicz for the amazing location map – it was even better than last year’s!
Ambler Arts
In the summer term of 2024, FoA / Ambler Arts helped to organise and fund the school’s annual Arts Week. We worked closely with the school’s Arts Lead to shape the theme and ideas for the week, and sourced the artist who went on to work with the children. Arts Week 2024 focused on the skill of printing, with the children working alongside our artist-inresidence, Sarah Pimenta, to create a series of collaborative textile banners. The theme was Friendship and Equality, and the children designed imaginative stencil images to explore this important topic. They began with mono-printing to produce colourful banner backgrounds, before screen-printing their individual stencil designs on top.
The final collaborative artworks were first unveiled as a giant banner at the Ambler Summer Exhibition in July 2024, and now form part of the school’s permanent art displays.
As part of Arts Week, Ambler Arts also organised a CPD teacher training session, supporting the creative development of staff. In addition, Ambler Arts supported the school’s Arts Lead with the Ambler Summer Art Exhibition. To coincide with the exhibition, we also designed and produced bookmarks, posters, and notebooks featuring the children’s artwork. These were sold on the day, giving families a lovely keepsake of the giant banners - and, importantly, helping to raise funds for future Arts Weeks.
A big thank you to Illiana Ortega Alcazar, Natalia Yanez-Stiel and Sorrel Challands for continuing to lead Ambler Arts events and nurturing creative talent and showcasing the wonderful artistic pieces created by our Ambler community. Also a big thank you to Ellie Thompson who will taking over the lead in 2025.
Grow Ambler
Grow Ambler hosted two very successful gardening days where families volunteered and helped to do tasks such as planting, weeding and maintaining the planters, spreading woodchip in the forest, and tidying up the school grounds. Families brought a picnic, and everyone enjoyed a fun, relaxed and sociable day. The highlight was children getting to make salads with the school grown vegetables!
Grow Ambler leadership also changed during the reporting period. Louis Carraz, Al Hutchinson and Katie Watson. We thank all those who have led and continue to lead this really important part of our Ambler community and give all families a chance to learn how to grow fruit, vegetables, plants and flowers and experience the mental and physical benefits of gardening.
FINANCES
FoA funding decisions are guided by the school’s requests and needs for fundraising and expenditure, regularly liaising with the Management team to establish where the funds can make the most valuable difference. This helps to ensure that the school is able to deploy funds where they are most needed.
Raising money is an important way FoA can support the school , particularly with the recent cuts to school budgets. FoA and the school carefully consider how to make trips and extracurricular activities affordable for all pupils. FoA looks to raise money creatively, and to strike a balance between asking Ambler families to contribute and looking for sources of funding outside of the school community. We know this will be even more important in the year ahead as we tackle the impacts of the cost of living crisis.
It has been agreed that FoA accounts will be drawn to coincide with the school’s annual financial year-end (not the School academic year). It has also been agreed that the School Auditors can on request audit the FoA bank account and records, giving assurance to the stakeholders of FoA.
While events were the main source of income for FOA, we also raised money throughout the year via commission-raising collaborations including estate agent board sponsorship with Winkworth Estate Agents.
We have been fortunate to benefit from generous payroll giving as well as funding from several parents’ donations via the Benevity platform. These contributions make a significant difference to fundraising levels and are greatly appreciated.
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£'s
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| In the 2024-25 financial year we were able to | |
|---|---|
| fund: | |
| Chromebooks to support SEND pupils | 4,785 |
| Stone Age Workshop - 2023 | 515 |
| Stone Age Workshop - 2024 | 528 |
| Anti-Racism assemblies | 175 |
| Panto | 4,323 |
| Subsidy for Bletchley Park trip | 534 |
| Summer exhibition | 1,079 |
| First Aid workshops | 974 |
| Year 6 Graffiti workshops - Community | 1,479 |
| Playground equipment | 454 |
| Victoria Workshop | 528 |
| Poetry Workshop | 1,025 |
| Year 6 Leavers Hoodies | 1,500 |
| Your voice matters workshops | 870 |
| Children's mental health week workshop | 475 |
| Amazing plants workshops | 146 |
| Trip subsidy - Children's Centre | 1,760 |
| Trip subsidy - School | 8,400 |
| Black history month | 1,000 |
| Transfer Tesco grant to the school | 500 |
| Total | 31,050 |
Headline for the year ending 31 March 2025 we are:
| Income: | |
|---|---|
| Commissions | 98 |
| Corporate | 7,380 |
| General donations | 6,169 |
| Community fund donations | 3,108 |
| Fundraising income | 21,035 |
| Grant income | 1,500 |
| Misc Income | 85 |
| Total | 39,375 |
| Expenditure: | |
| CCA | 31,050 |
| Fundraising cost | 5,266 |
| Running Costs | 213 |
| Total | 36,529 |
| Closing balance | 35,195 |
SPECIAL THANKS
Thanks go to Mrs McNicholl and all the School and Children’s Centre staff and Governors. In particular the office staff, all the Class Reps, and Maira and Paul for all their support.
We are very grateful for the amazing support from local businesses and from Arsenal football club.
Of course, we also thank every parent, carer and child who has volunteered, donated to, attended and supported our events throughout the year. Without these vital volunteers lending their skills, displaying estate agent boards, contacting local businesses, passing on ideas and so much more we could not have had such a successful and fun year!
GETTING INVOLVED
We are always looking for more people to volunteer their time and skills!
We welcome all volunteers, positivity, enthusiasm and suggestions. If you would like to join the Committee, or are able to take on a smaller more discrete role, please do let us know. We need your skills and ideas to help support Ambler.
Get in touch at any time by speaking to a Committee Member, leaving a note with the School Office, emailing friendsofambler@gmail.com or contacting us via our Instagram @friendsofambler. Please look out for text messages/WhatsApp messages/School Gateway app messages, email and our social media pages. We hope everyone will find an opportunity to be involved!
Thank you to all the Ambler pupils, staff, teachers, carers and families for a wonderful year. We had a great year with new faces, new events and a new spin on the Summer Fair. I have really enjoyed my time as Chair and wish the team and my successor all the best. I will be staying on to support the transition and continue my role as a Trustee.
Many thanks,
Lucy Carraz, Chair, Friends of Ambler
| Friends of Ambler | No (if any) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Receipts andpayments accounts | CC16a | ||||
| For the period from |
01-Apr-24 | To | 31-Mar-25 |
Section A Receipts and payments
| Unrestricted funds Restricted funds Endowment funds Total funds Last year |
|
|---|---|
| to the nearest £ to the nearest £ to the nearest £ to the nearest £ to the nearest £ |
|
| A1 Receipts | |
| Commissions 98 - - 98 - Corporate 7,380 - - 7,380 - Donations 6,169 - - 6,169 - ACF donations - 3,108 - 3,108 - Fundraisingincome 21,035 - - 21,035 - Grant income 1,500 - - 1,500 - Interest 85 - - 85 - Gift Aid - - - - - Sub total(Gross income for AR)36,268 3,108 - 39,375 - ~~ase~~ |
|
| A2 Asset and investment sales, (see table). - - - - - - - - - Sub total - - - - - Total receipts 36,268 3,108 - 39,375 - A3 Payments Contribtions to meet charitable aims 31,050 - - 31,050 - Fundraisingcosts 5,266 - - 5,266 - Runningcosts 213 - - 213 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Sub total 36,529 - - 36,529 - A4 Asset and investment purchases, (see table) - - - - - - - - Sub total - - - - - Total payments 36,529 - - 36,529 - ~~———————~~ ~~eeeeo~~ ~~—————~~ |
|
| Net of receipts/(payments) - 262 3,108 - 2,846 - A5 Transfers between funds - - - - - A6 Cash funds last year end 24,201 8,149 - 32,350 - Cash funds this year end 23,939 11,257 - 35,195 - ~~=====~~ |
- - - - |
CCXX R1 accounts (SS)
30/01/2026
1
Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period
| Categories B1 Cash funds B2 Other monetary assets B3 Investment assets B4 Assets retained for the charity’s own use B5 Liabilities |
(agree balances with receipts and payments account(s)) Details Total cash funds Details Details Details Details |
Unrestricted funds to nearest £ 23,939 - - 23,939 OK Unrestricted funds to nearest £ - - - - - - Fund to which asset belongs Fund to which asset belongs Fund to which liability relates |
Restricted funds to nearest £ 11,257 - - 11,257 OK Restricted funds to nearest £ - - - - - - Cost (optional) - - - - - Cost (optional) - - - - - - - - - Amount due (optional) - - - - - |
Endowment funds to nearest £ |
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| Endowment funds to nearest £ |
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| Current value (optional) |
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| Current value (optional) |
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| When due (optional) |
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Signed by one or two trustees on behalf of all the trustees
Signature
Print Name
Date of approval
CCXX R2 accounts (SS)
~~30/01/2026~~
~~2~~
CCXX R3 accoLJnts ISSI 3010112026
(HARITY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND AND WALES Independent examiner's report on the accounts Section A Independent Examiner's Report Report to the trustees Friends of Ambler On accounts for the year ended 3110312025 Charity no (if any) 1157725 Set out on pages I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the above charity ("the Trust") for the year ended Responsibilities and basis of report As the charity's trustees, you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 ("the Act.). I report in respect of my examination of the Trust's accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carrying out my examination, I have followed all the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145(5)(b) of the Act. Independent tThe charity's gross income exceeded £250,000 and l am qualified to examiner's statement undertake the examination by being a qualified member of [insert name of applicable listed body]]. Delete [ ] if not applicable. I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have come to my attention in connection with the examination (other than that disclosed below ') which gives me cause to believe that in, any material respect: the accounting records were not kept in accordance with section 130 of the Charities Act., or the accounts did not accord with the accounting records., or the accounts did not comply with the applicable requirements concerning the form and content of accounts set out in the Charities (Accounts and Reports) Regulations 2008 other than any requirement that the accounts give a 'true and fair, view which is not a matter considered as part of an independent examination. I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in this report in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached. Please delete the words in the brackets if they do not apply. Signed: Date: 2910112026 Name: James McDonald Relevant professional qualification(s) or body Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) IER Oct 2018
(if any): Address: 30 Crown Place. London EC2A 4EB Section B Disclosure Only complete if the examiner needs to highlight material matters of concern (see CC32, Independent examination of charity accounts: directions and guidance for examiners). Give here brief details of any items that the examiner wishes to disclose. IER Oct 2018